


think you're the only ones?

by Jingle



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Headcanon, Hopeful Ending, Original Character Death(s), Short One Shot, loss of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 16:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3944263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jingle/pseuds/Jingle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You've got your reasons... And I've got mine."</p><p>Chel needed a backstory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	think you're the only ones?

_"You've got your reasons... And I've got mine."_

El Dorado was a wonderful place to live, assuming one was in a place of power... Or was easily pleased.

Chel had never been either.

Perhaps it was cynical not to be content with the simple things that made life in El Dorado special. If that was the case, Chel accepted her cynicism. Simple pleasures hadn’t been able to help when her parents and her brothers got sick. No game of ball of pretty flower stopped the weeks of agony as they slowly faded away. The illness had not been a kind and quick killer.

In one of her last days, Chel’s mother spoke to her about how much the family had deserved more. How a lack of wealth was no reason for _anyone_ to suffer. El Dorado was not the place for such thinking, however. So, she had said, she hoped Chel would find her way out of the city.

“I will, Mama. I promise.”

It was shortly after her family passed that Chief Tannabok came into power, and things got better, but not better enough to comfort Chel. In time, she came to cope with the loss of her family, but she never forgot the promise she made to her mother.

Chel spent her adult years trying to get out of El Dorado in a way that would assure a comfortable future. She would have what she deserved; what her whole family had deserved, but been denied. No attempt was successful, though, until Tulio and Miguel had arrived in El Dorado.

She’d fallen for Tulio because he was a handsome man who was smart enough to value wealth over most anything else. But, oddly enough, she hadn’t _truly_ loved him until he gave up his gold to save the city. Chel had never thought she’d owed El Dorado a thing, but when it was in danger, it wasn’t about El Dorado itself. It was about the people, the _good_ people who had surely faced their own tragedies, and who deserved more than such a cruel end.

She wasn’t going to stay, but that didn’t mean she was turning her back on them.

So in the end, she did make her way out, but not with the promise of a comfortable future. That, Chel figured, was alright. She knew, ultimately, that her mother had not meant for her to leave El Dorado wealthy, but simply better off. And with a world of adventure calling to her, she knew she was just that.


End file.
